Biography

Born: 20 May 1932 in Los Angeles, CA

Genre: Jazz

Years Active: '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, '00s

As a longtime staff arranger for Liberty Records, Bob Florence wrote some of the most innovative and challenging charts in postwar jazz — in many respects a man out of time, he possessed a particular brilliance for large-ensemble arrangements in the tradition of Duke Ellington, although the commercial vogue for big-band jazz had long since passed. Born May 30, 1932, in Los Angeles, Florence was a child prodigy who took his first piano lesson at the age of three. He abandoned classical studies...